A roadside diner on a busy thoroughfare like Route 138 on Aquidneck Island has a captive audience of New York-to-Cape Cod travelers and summer visitors to nearby vineyards (Newport and Greenvale). To hold onto that clientele, it must prove its mettle with solid versions of the classics while also tossing a few creative sandwiches and salads onto the menu.

Anna Dimattino has been doing just that for the past four years at her Anna D Café. She just opened the adjacent ice cream stand in April, so it’s a full-service stop at her eatery: gourmet coffee (and its espresso incarnations) with house-made pastries; a wide array of paninis, grinders, and wraps; then ice cream (Hershey’s Supreme) or gelato (local Cold Fusion).

Breakfast sandwiches, on toast, bagels, English muffins, croissants, or in a wrap are available all day, and for me they were filling enough to have for two meals. Bill had Anna’s signature “breakfast wrap” with two egg patties, bacon, sausage, and ham, plus cheese, onion, and tomato ($7.50). One egg with cheese and one meat is $3.85, so his wrap was a bargain and a very filling breakfast.

The Mexican breakfast wrap is listed with two egg patties, plus sausage, bacon, pepper jack cheese, caramelized onion, tomato, and sour cream ($7.50). I had a yen for the Mexican spiciness but not the meats, so I requested it without, and it was quite good.

I also indulged in one of the giant homemade muffins, the cranberry orange ($2.05). I have a weakness for muffins, especially moist and light ones (which this was). Its buttery taste was complemented by the orange flavor and there were plenty of cranberries, plus walnuts. The fact that there were no muffin crumbs to carry to the car with my leftover breakfast wrap was ample testimony.

There are many other muffin incarnations, and the carrot raisin is almost like a small carrot cake, which is what brought staffer Liz Carnevale and her sister to work with Anna D. They brought their mother’s carrot cake (crushed pineapple in the batter and cream cheese frosting) to a local party, where they met Dimattino, an émigré from the shores of Manhattan. She was so impressed by the cake that she asked the sisters to work for her . . . and to bring along the carrot cake recipe.

Though that specialty wasn’t available for me to taste on the days when I stopped by Anna D’s, I did ogle the other homemade pastries, including a cinnamon-walnut coffee cake, a lemon pound cake, large chocolate chip or oatmeal cookies, scones, cinnamon rolls, and a pan of brownies (I got one to go, and it was fudgy with chips — terrif!).

After our breakfast sandwiches, we took home an Asian salad with grilled chicken ($8.50) and the “my big fat Greek wrap,” also grilled chicken but with feta, lettuce, tomato, and tzatziki sauce ($7.95). Bill’s salad had shredded cabbage tossed with chopped Romaine, broccoli, carrots, cucumbers, and scallions. It was topped with chow mein noodles and cashews. The dressing — a chili Thai peanut variation — was on the side, and Bill thoroughly enjoyed the salad for his supper.

Vinh Sun BBQ and Restaurant Constrained by a small word count, I often choose restaurants with relatively short menus. I correctly took Vinh-Sun to be a Cantonese "BBQ" specialist, a retailer of roast pork, whole suckling pigs, ducks, and chickens. But it's also a spanking-clean Chinatown restaurant serving a broad Cantonese and Hong Kong menu.

Myung Dong 1st Avenue Myung Dong refers to a high-rent, youth-oriented shopping district in Seoul, thus "1st Avenue" is a kind of evocation of both Fifth Avenue and SoHo. This restaurant has a variety of Japanese and Korean dishes, but the idea is to appeal to a young crowd, more specifically a drinking crowd.

Spice You might find it difficult to believe, but at one time there were no Thai restaurants in Providence. I know, I know, it’s sad — no pad Thai, no pik pow sauce, such deprivation, such shamed downward glances in the streets.

Taquería Jalisco Exploring a new restaurant is like baseball: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes it isn't available. My Taquería Jalisco rainout was a Tuesday, its regular day off.

Midtown Café In this economy and in downtown Wakefield, it's a tough task to keep a restaurant going.

The Regal Beagle The Regal Beagle is making a quick success doing what almost all the new restaurants want to do: small plates; comfort food with a gourmet twist; a mixture of high and low; a bit of locovore, green, and slow fare; some salty fast food; interesting drinks; and scrambled nostalgia.

Skara Grill Having longed for an all-out Greek dining room in metro Boston since, well, almost since the Phoenix was reviewing plays by Euripides and protesting the Peloponnesian War, I finally hit Dionysos in Cambridge about a year before it closed in 2007.

The Spot Café Your typical cheap-eats reviewer spends a lot of time in diners: they're America's original inexpensive quick-service restaurants, and most are a step up from modern fast-food franchises.

Dan’s Place We didn't notice any grizzlies or cougars as road kill on our trek to Dan's Place, though we kept our eyes peeled there in the wilds of West Greenwich.

Southern feel As sandwich shops continue to proliferate during this down economy, the new Po' Boys & Pickles offers a formula for short-term buzz, and perhaps long-term loyalty.

Go for the doughnuts The French Press occupies the conceptual space matching its geographic location: to the left of Dunkin Donuts — more local, more artisanal, but hitting the same basic notes.

LIVES ON THE EDGE | July 02, 2014 No one would dispute the fact that Hester Kaplan’s writing is effective and well-crafted, as she digs into the underbelly of American society in her latest book of short stories, ' Unravished .'

EMOTION IN MOTION | April 02, 2014 When Festival Ballet Providence started their in-studio series, “Up Close On Hope,” more than 10 years ago, the vision was to give up-and-coming choreographers and dancers a stage less overwhelming and more intimate on which to find their footing.